Posted
by
Soulskill
on Sunday November 08, 2009 @12:13PM
from the we're-gonna-need-a-bigger-boat dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that the Japanese trawler Diasan Shinsho-maru has capsized off the coast of China, as its three-man crew dragged their net through a swarm of giant jellyfish (which can grow up to six feet in diameter and travel in packs) and tried to haul up a net that was too heavy. The crew was thrown into the sea when the vessel capsized, but the three men were rescued by another trawler. Relatively little is known about Nomura's jellyfish, such as why some years see thousands of the creatures floating across the Sea of Japan on the Tsushima Current, but last year there were virtually no sightings. In 2007, there were 15,500 reports of damage to fishing equipment caused by the creatures. Experts believe that one contributing factor to the jellyfish becoming more frequent visitors to Japanese waters may be a decline in the number of predators, which include sea turtles and certain species of fish. 'Jellies have likely swum and swarmed in our seas for over 600 million years,' says scientist Monty Graham of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama. 'When conditions are right, jelly swarms can form quickly. They appear to do this for sexual reproduction.'"

I am not usually the one to yell "Mods on crack!" but I don't really think an 'explanation' this obvious should be marked insightful. Nothing personal.... unless somebody doesn't actually know that trawl is a pun on troll in this case?

In 2007, there were 15,500 reports of damage to fishing equipment caused by the creatures.

In other news: Last year several thousands of SUVs were damaged by children who, for some reasons, were not constrained by their parents to stay inside all the time and instead failed to stay at the proper speed to move smoothly with the traffic. Due to the excellent structural protection from the SUVs their drivers did not suffer major physical injuries.

In 2007, there were 15,500 reports of damage to fishing equipment caused by the creatures.

In other news: Last year several thousands of SUVs were damaged by children who, for some reasons, were not constrained by their parents to stay inside all the time and instead failed to stay at the proper speed to move smoothly with the traffic. Due to the excellent structural protection from the SUVs their drivers did not suffer major physical injuries.

It's not nearly as bad as you make it out to be. If you get the really big tires the little brats never even mess up the paint. Oh sure, sometimes a bicycle will damage a tire sidewall, but that's what roadside assistance if for, right?

Not necessarily. If the net is any distance from the ship, hauling in means hauling the net through the water. Only when the net is adjacent to the boat (beneath the business end of the boom arm, I suppose) is it hauled into the boat. Hauling up out of the water is the dangerous part, I assume that's when the ship capsized. But the ship could conceivably have capsized while hauling the net through the water, given enough jellyfish mass and eno

in other news visitors from the middle east were tragically killed when the twin towers of the world trade center blocked the path of the jet they were traveling on. the pentagon building and a field in Pennsylvania were responsible for similar incidents.

No, it's only human error when several truck loads of small sardines capsize your ship. In fact, when it comes to the hierarchy of Japanese fishermen, the fishermen that get capsized by sardines tend not to want to talk about it.

The worst part of this "invasion" is that the species isn't really tasty at all. Not to mention that every part of this particular jellyfish contains toxins. Every touching the top of the jellyfish will result in temporary numbness.

If they are proliferating because of a lack of predators, we should probably go ahead and kill as many of these as we can to maintain a good ecosystem balance.

This is a big todo about nothing. Though jellyfish are a problem in and around Japan, it's not a problem in the seas of China because of the Chinese needle fish. It is confused for a snake (the Chinese needle snake) but is actually an eel. The easiest thing to do is to introduce the needle fish to the waters around Japan.

Some people speculate, and I agree with this based on subjective experience, that farmed fish doesn't taste as good as fresh fish. You can grow all the fish you want. Sure, it tastes okay, but I prefer fresh. There's something about fresh fish that makes for a better meal in whatever you tend to use it in. It's considerably more noticeable in Sushi.

It's the feed. Ever eaten rabbit? A wild rabbit has a taste that is very distinctive. Farm raised rabbit has a rather soapy taste, so I won't eat it. The only difference is, wild rabbit eat what wild rabbits are SUPPOSED to eat - green vegetation. Farm raised rabbits eat prepared feed, which includes anti-biotics, possibly hormonal growth accelerators like they use for cattle - whatever the eggheads believe will grow the most meat for the least money. Farm fisheries are the same. It's near impossible to duplicate their natural diet, and if you could duplicate it, they would be far more expensive than wild fish.

So I wonder... would a farm rabbit raised on feed taste better if its diet were changed to something more natural say... a month or so... before it was killed? Or is this something that happens over the entire course of its life?

So I wonder... would a farm rabbit raised on feed taste better if its diet were changed to something more natural say... a month or so... before it was killed?

Sure, but I don't know about a month.

Don't enjoy rabbit, so I'll pass on commenting. Chicken, on the other hand, if you feed one a steady diet of corn, you get golden-coloured and really tasty meat. Cows that are fed grass (as opposed to grain), give milk that tastes far better than what you'll find in the American supermarket aisles. The cheese made from that milk doubly so. The meat obviously is better too and priced accordingly.

Pigs have often been allowed to forage for mast, then penned up and fed corn and maybe some sweet feed for some weeks before slaughter. Remember that a hog is an omnivore, so free ranging hogs eat some really NASTY stuff!Even today, farmers who slaughter their own hogs for private consumption will replace the commercially prepared feeds with corn.Would it work for rabbits? Probably.

Probably? Weeks? Stuff you (or animals) eat will get into your body within hours. Let a goose eat garlic a few hours before it is slaughtered and you have a nice taste of garlic in the meat.It is a very simple thing. Stuff that gets into the animals stomach will get into the blood. The blood will put stuff in the muscles. Muscle is meat.

Next to the taste of food there also is the tenderness of the meat. Look at an athlete. He will have a lot of muscle. Look ate the average geek and he won't, even though the

Farm fisheries are the same. It's near impossible to duplicate their natural diet, and if you could duplicate it, they would be far more expensive than wild fish.

That's the point right there. The seas these days, though somewhat regulated, are still in the "tragedy of the commons" phase (heck, it's cited on Wikipedia as one of the current modern examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons [wikipedia.org] ).

The current economic idea, (if I understood something of the pop-economics books I've read), is to internalize those costs (externalities). How, I don't have an idea:P - maybe by setting some kind of global tax on fishing (not that I'm usually in favor of tax

"If it were just diet, farmers would simply change the diet of the animal for the last couple of weeks to change the taste."

Whoosh?

If it were just diet, farmers would simply change the diet of the animal for the last couple of weeks to change the taste.

Canada

The majority of beef cattle in Ontario are finished on a corn (maize)-based diet, whereas Western Canadian beef is finished on a barley-based diet. This rule is not absolute, however, as producers in both regions will alter the mix of feed grains accord

Well, it's all based on diet, right? So I'd say an American on a diet of McDonald's would taste like crap, while an American on a diet of Kobe beef and other high end produce would be the cats pajamas of long pork.

I always thought it interesting that people think equilibrium is a ecosystem free of humans. Aren't humans a part of the ecosystem. True equilibrium is our food source dying, followed by world starvation. The environmental push has nothing to do with the environment but is in fact human preservation. Let's call it exactly what it is.

I always thought it interesting that people think equilibrium is a ecosystem free of humans. Aren't humans a part of the ecosystem.

Perhaps when we were dumb monkeys and there were something like 40,000 - 200,000 of us you could make this argument. However we grew brains and one result is that there are over 6 billion of us and growing. Not sustainable.

Of course it is, this is a simple "predator-prey model" scenario. As our population grows, we find more ways to get food to eat. If it grows too much then we won't have any more food and the population will shrink. It is no longer practical for the human population to sustain itself by hunting and foraging, but fortunetly (with our oh so evil brains) we have found new sources of food (farming). If we ever reach the limits of what farming can produce, then we will simply find a new source of food, or die

CLUB HIM! CLUB HIM! The barbie-que is already fired up. You club him, I'll clean him!! He'll look good beside the eels, the shark steaks, and the dog steaks! I hear geek tastes like pork! Oh, I'm so excited, CLUB HIM!

Basically, they examined a couple of habitats and found that habitats with predators (wolves and cougars, in the places they did their studies checked) were -dramatically- more healthy than those without.

Obvious? Of course - predators cull the weak and sick, the easy kills, so of course what you have left is healthier.

More activity to hunt this things probably will also hurt even more their predators or whatever contributed to regulate their numbers. The best way to get to balance is to try to repair what we did to unbalance things, like stop/minimize hunting sea turtles or that species of fishes that controlled their numbers.

...stop/minimize hunting sea turtles or that species of fishes that controlled their numbers.

Not everything is subject to predator control. Jellies may be more limited (historically) by competition for food with small fishes. It's possible a combination of changing climate conditions favoring jellies over small fishes, and removal of competitors for zooplankton leads to these events rather than removing predators.

It's not hard to understand how this happens when many of those predators of zooplankton (e.g. small fish) are overfished to supply fish farms with cheap food (e.g. salmon, tuna). Aquaculture is often portrayed as the way of the future, what they don't tell you is that much of it is only enabled by fishing. And such practice is ridiculously inefficient, like feeding cows to lions so that we may eat the lions.

Let's see. Seafood that's not tasty and contains toxins. And you think that's going to keep Japanese foodies from eating it?

I've eaten (non-toxic) jellyfish. It's about as interesting as chewing on one of those rawhide bones they give to dogs. You wouldn't think there'd be any point to collecting, drying, shipping and lavishing culinary talent on such a thing. But of course, that's exactly what makes it a delicacy.

Wouldn't the proliferation at least help the predator population? At least they're less likely to go hungry.

Being able to eat jellyfish profitably (they are not very nutritious) is an adaptation a relatively small number of predators (in particular turtles, a very limited number of mostly non-commercial fish) enjoy; those predators are mainly limited by other factors (like habitat damage on beaches) - hunger isn't a main issue for them right now.

That's the thing about jellies; they're really the end of the food chain (despite being low down) so if they bloom, there's not much predator control to bring then in check.

"Relatively little is known about Nomura's jellyfish, such as why some years see thousands of the creatures floating across the Sea of Japan on the Tsushima Current, but last year there were virtually no sightings."

"Relatively little is known about Nomura's jellyfish, such as why some years see thousands of the creatures floating across the Sea of Japan on the Tsushima Current, but last year there were virtually no sightings."

Hey there! FlashMob4Jellyfish is using Twitter

WhN? 2day. Where? Sea of Japan. What? Jam as many of us intoa fishing net and capsize the boat.4:48 PM Oct 9th from ocean

These jellyfish spawn off the cost of China, near Hong Kong. The increasing water temperature (since the end of the last ice age) coupled with the pollution that China dumps into the sea, has caused an explosion of the aforementioned animals. The jellyfish then float eastward, right into the Japanese fishing waters.

The Japanese have no real solution to this problem. Thy only thing they can do it try to kill as many jellyfish as they can (using bladed or hooked poles).

Here's when I venture into probably troll country: I'm okay with the affect the jellyfish are having. The way that the Japanese over-fish the oceans (not to mention killing whales), I'm okay with anything that slows them down. Now only if something could slow down the over-fishing done by the rest of the world. This includes the US, of which I'm a citizen.

I'm not a Green Peace lovin' (I hate 'em), tree hugging, nut job; but we really need to have some sort of international regulation (with punishments in the form of sanctions) on the fishing and care of the oceans. From over-fishing to habitat destruction (often a side affect of fishing) to pollution, we're well on our way to killing the oceans as we know them. Which will lead to the killing of our civilization as we know it. Not the end of it, mind you. Just the end of it as we know it.

There's no need for fisheries. It's been shown that simply cordoning off sections of the ocean where no one is allowed to fish at all, causes an explosion of sea life in the surrounding areas.

Well...okay, I take back part of what I said. We do need fisheries for shell fish. It's fishing for shell fish (especially shrimp) that causes so much of the habitat destruction. The trawlers rake scoops across the ocean beds to catch shrimp. Which annihilate the corral reefs.

It's been shown that simply cordoning off sections of the ocean where no one is allowed...

You realize you just described a fishery, right? A fishery is not some giant tank where fish are grown (ok, it CAN be, but that is by far the exception). The vast majority of fisheries aren't even fish farms, they are wild fisheries.

Fisheries are areas where fishing is actively regulated for the express purpose of producing a larger fish harvest. We have dozens, if not close to a hundred, fisheries here in Alaska, and as far as I know not a single fish farming operation, those all operate on the west-coa

There's no need for fisheries. It's been shown that simply cordoning off sections of the ocean where no one is allowed to fish at all, causes an explosion of sea life in the surrounding areas.

That it does, but then no one can eat the fish. Surely it is better to have a sustainable fishery, which can be done if the fishery is made into a property right, usually with government oversight and regulation. It's pretty much the same solution that has fixed the original commons problem on land - get rid of the co

>>These jellyfish spawn off the cost of China, near Hong Kong. The increasing water temperature (since the end of the last ice age) coupled with the pollution that China dumps into the sea, has caused an explosion of the aforementioned animals. The jellyfish then float eastward, right into the Japanese fishing waters.

No, no, no! You forgot to blame it on global warming!

Remember, anytime anything weird happens, you must blame it on global warming!

There are three criteria, that if met by the animal in question, prevent me from eating them.

1. How intelligent they are. If an animal displays some sort of above rudimentary intelligence, it gets a pass. So whales, porpoise, monkeys, apes, octopi, and similar animals get a pass. I won't even eat pig anymore.
2. How closely they're related to humans. Apes, monkeys, lawyers, and politicians get a pass.
3. If they're endangered. No animal is tasty enough

You've obviously never seen giant, radioactive jellyfish before. They easily transition from water to air and hover over the city, soaking up the juice from the power lines (they use it to help them hover) before floating down to Tokyo Tower for some tenticle-based destruction. Oh and pr0n. Wherever there are tenticles in Japan, there's tenticle pr0n.

Japanese nuclear radiation has stirred up Godzilla into an attack on
one of the Cephalopod kings of the Major Arcana. The world is
doomed. The only question is how we will die. Screaming Mad
from Cthulhu, or Alien inversion from Waking Kraken.

I move to petition Congress to recommission the USS Iowa and deploy it to the Sea of Japan.

Jellyfish born near China and hanging out near Japan will not be open to English-language negotiations, so we must instead negotiate with 16 inch guns. They will surely give in to a show of force... everyone knows jellyfish are spineless!

"What capsizes a boat" is probably very complicated- how loaded is it with fish? How high are the seas? How much water and fuel does it have on board? How much angular momentum does the boat have? How much water resistance does the hull give?

It's probably possible or even normal to haul up a load that, if you kept it hanging out on the crane, would slowly cause the ship to heel over too far, but if brought aboard relatively quickly, wouldn't...

Well, the problem probably resulted from a much higher drag on a single side of the trawler. They usually work in groups, (at least, the small ones), and if most of the jellyfish are on a specific side, the drag can getting close to an horizontal pull, easily capsizing the boat.

There's not much chance that if we'd lock down the bottom of the net in something underneath the boat, that 1 the net would be strong enough so that infinite strenght winch would bring the boat underneath the water rather than break